Printing Money

Photo: Katie Moorman

You may have spotted a paragraph in a recent Viva webmag noting that the Lewes Pound Group is on the march again. Clearly attempts to make the punters notice the existence of “Toms” (why is there still no nickname?) via canvas bags and stalls at the Farmers Market haven’t had the desired effect. It seems a more radical procedure is required to animate the Pound’s decaying corpse. Now they are giving (yes, giving) free Lewes Pounds if you spend a few quid in certain shops. A good marketing wheeze, no? Get the notes circulating by putting a few free tasters out there. I mean it worked for Ben and Jerry’s.

It might be helpful at this point to remind ourselves what money means. For a long time (since King Croesus in the 6th century BC, more or less), cash meant coins made of a metal agreed to be precious. Coins were a useful technology and worked fine until an unnamed, but inspired, Chinese bureaucrat in the 8th century AD came up with a brilliant idea. “Why lug that heavy gold around with you? In fact why not put it over here in this official-looking government strong-box and we’ll give you a note to say we’ll pay you back on request.” And so paper money was born. For Marco Polo such a mechanism was the greatest wonder of Kublai Khan’s empire. It was also its weak spot. Wanting to finance war (as the Mongols often did), the Mighty Khan listened to yet another clever official who proposed that, as these notes were so handy, people would rarely want to get their hands on the actual gold. Why not then simply print more paper? To be fair to the Khan this is a temptation many later rulers (including our current Government) have been equally unable to resist. 

This is not to say that the Lewes Pound group are ‘doing a Kubla’ and simply printing more dosh (though it must be tempting). Like the ancient Chinese Jiaozi, The Lewes Pound is backed by a promise to redeem it for something ‘real’, in this case Sterling. What Sterling is backed by is another story. The problem is that money is simply a way of keeping accounts between us. We have plenty of convenient ways to do this. As has been pointed out in these pages before, new ways to pay (especially if they are less convenient) may simply end up rather de trop.

Will the current campaign change things? Possibly, but I wouldn't bet a 21 pound note on it. Despite sucking up around 15 grand to run last year and goodness knows how much time, even some Transition Townies can’t seem to be bothered to defend the economic and environmental claims made for the Pound any more. Some clearly still have hope. It does slightly remind me of an unpopular boy at my school who would give people sweets with invitations to his birthday. Whether it was a visionary marketing strategy or a desperate gesture is still not clear to me even thirty years later. I suppose it depends on whether his parents followed it up with something decent (like even more sweets). Or maybe he was great when you got to know him. Ben and Jerry’s may be rewarding on closer acquaintance and thus giving freebies makes sense. Will the Lewes Pound be so tasty?

Buying Local

I won a muffin contest the other day. Not a phrase I often utter as I have never entered one before. The competition was organised by the local environmental types to showcase the general deliciousness of local seasonal ingredients. Don’t you find that all of a sudden localness is everywhere? From supermarkets to tourist information everyone is touting it as better, tastier and, above all more morally sound than the alternatives. Our ancestors had to wear hair shirts and flog themselves to get into heaven. All we have to do is re-style beetroot as dessert (see the winning entry here), and we’re laughing. As the glory of victory fades, though, I’m left with this thought: is our current obsession with buying local all it’s cracked up to be?

It depends on what you mean by local. Buying food from Tesco (in Lewes) is one kind of local. Does that sound ludicrous? There are clearly all sorts of reasons to dislike supermarkets but, along with their cheapness and convenience, they keep you or your neighbour in a job. Of course you might do better going to Waitrose; it’s a few quid more but the employees also own the store and are in on the profits.
Businesses owned by people in town are what spring to mind when thinking about buying local. Going to Skylark or Bag of Books instead of Amazon. No hyperlink for the faceless multinational, but they do offer a range and prices that the local shops can’t possibly compete with. The local ones have advantages of their own though: browsing (never as good online), bantering with the owners, and events with authors. You (literally) pays your money and takes your choice. The stock of businesses like these is, of course, not particularly local. Though Lewes is obviously a town of infinite creativity, only local stock would mean they’d be bankrupt by tomorrow.

The real piety du jour (and the raison d’etre for a lot of the Town’s environmental activity) is eating local food. The less food travels, goes the argument, the less the impact on the environment. It’s just common sense, no? Unfortunately the notion of 'food miles' is an area where common sense is misleading. Sure, you can probably be confident that those air-freighted blueberries you had in January aren’t the best emissions-wise; but what about other commodities? Loads of basic stuff comes by ship where the carbon footprint is a lot smaller, while growing things locally on inappropriate land or with extra heating, or whatever, can mean a far higher environmental cost. While the whole issue is really mind-bendingly complicated it’s nice to feel good even if we’re not having much practical effect.

I can hear the teeth gnashing at that last sally already. Of course if it’s a completely different sort of life we’re after (living with the seasons, getting our hands dirty and eating seasonal veg all winter), then local food is clearly the way forward. The thing is people who do live this kind of life, usually as a result of economic collapse or sanctions, never seem all that happy with it. Funny that. To be honest, much as I liked my beetroot muffins I’m not expecting them to storm the world any time soon. Show me someone in rural Ukraine who wouldn’t prefer a Nero’s chocolate chip one and I’ll show you an empty branch of Tesco. And now, if you’ll excuse me I think I have a few muffins left.


John McGowan

Beetroot and Chocolate Muffins Recipe

Beetroot and chocolate is a well established combo in cakes and also works in a sweet muffin. Normally though the beetroot is mixed with either melted chocolate or cocoa powder and the distinctive taste, texture and colour get a bit lost. These muffins are an attempt to retain some of the qualities of the beetroot by keeping the chocolate separate in the form of chocolate chips. They don’t come together till you bite into it.

Ingredients/Materials 8-12 muffin cases depending on how large you want them. A muffin/fairy cake tray 150g unsalted butter 200g self-raising flour 25g semolina ¼-½ teaspoon baking powder 175g light muscovado sugar Small pinch of salt  2 eggs ( beaten) 100g beetroot peeled and (grated)  100g bar of chocolate cut up into small pieces

Directions  Preheat oven to 180C (fan 160C) or gas 4.   Melt the butter and leave to cool.  Line the sections of the muffin tray with paper cases  Mix together the dry ingredients ensuring you get the lumps out of the sugar .   Add butter and eggs and gently mix in.  Stir in beetroot and chocolate chips  Spoon into muffin cases making between 8 and 12 according to how big you want them.   Bake for 25 - 35 minutes depending on the size of the muffins.  Check by sliding in a knife and seeing if it comes out clean.  Let them cool in the tin for a few minutes and then on a rack.

Thrift

The missus repaired some clothes the other day. As well as breathing new life into old trousers and not blowing the housekeeping the way her shopping benders usually do, this enterprise had the additional benefit of allowing her to feel thrifty. With the economy looking likely to tank again and George Osborne cutting the public sector like... well like a right-wing ideologue, surely making a few savings of this sort should be the order of the day? Thrift is practical. Thrift is virtuous. Thrift is sometimes a bit sanctimonious perhaps, but basically good. Isn’t it?

The merits of thrift in fact depend on who you want to do good for. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if you’re saving money you’re not spending it (though I know a six-year-old who would disagree). It did take a genius to work out what this means and that genius was John Maynard Keynes. Though often associated with the “hike up tax then spend like a drunken sailor” left-wing of politics, Keynes had some pretty subtle insights into the nature of recessions. His most influential principle was that, when economies are flat-lining, something needs to stimulate demand and get the wheels turning again. You can give people tax cuts and hope they spend more but, tight-fisted buggers that they are, the public might actually save some of the extra rather than blow it all on an Amazon binge. At times like this someone else needs to step in and flash a bit of green. That fall-back spender is usually the Government (pay attention young Osborne), though what they do with all the DVDs, books and iPods is a mystery.

Though not the first to notice the downside of saving, Keynes offered the clearest statement of the so-called “paradox of thrift”. One way of expressing this is to say that I may benefit if I follow Marguerite Patten’s wartime austerity tips described at last year’s Seedy Saturday. I save and my quids are in. However, if everyone starts making do and mending, demand will contract and the economy will head down the toilet. Keynes would’ve used a more decorous image as he was a gentleman as well as a genius. Whether or not he would have been as much of a gentleman had he met the young Marguerite in the Blitz is unknown. He was also, after all, an associate of the metrosexual Bloomsbury Group.

So it’s personal gain set against group loss. Still Christmas is coming and we all have a chance to be economic heroes. You may be sick of shops putting up their displays at the end of summer, outraged at being told to get your last minute gifts in October, and mad at the excess of Mega-Monday, but if there was ever a time to splash out surely this is it. Even that dourest of puritans Gordon Brown thought spending was our patriotic duty. From Superdrug to Skylark, from Tesco to Tizz’s, your town needs you! 

John McGowan, 8th Dec 2011 

Baking Bread

Anyone not like homemade bread? No? I didn't think so. It’s a byword for serious cookery, often delicious and the smell alone is reckoned to turn a shoddy house into a saleable property. It also seems to be the piety of the week for those of an environmental turn of mind. Not just regular bread either. To be truly committed to the earth these days sourdough is de rigeur. Just like our ancestors used to make in the days before we were corrupted by modern luxuries like coal-fired power stations, global trade and er... yeast. I can’t help but wonder though: what’s so sustainable about making your own bread?

Undeniably, home baking appeals to those with a  self-sufficient streak, though most of us don’t grow our own grains and mill them. Even so, with a bag of flour from Tesco you have a fighting chance of attaining the glow of self-righteousness  that radiated from Tom and Barbara in The Good Life. Rather inconveniently for the emissions-conscious though, baking a loaf in a domestic oven uses many times the amount of energy of commercial oven. You can get around that one fairly neatly using one of those very clever bread machines which not only consume less lecky but also do some of the work.

It’s the hassle factor that seems to be the main sticking point.  If you’ve ever tried bread-making you will have noticed that it requires a certain commitment. Even if someone has a bread machine how likely are they to use it regularly? Some of us might be good for a few loaves or maybe a month or two of obsession, but who is going to live off home made bread unless they have to? Then there is the problem of who is going to eat a diet of our hearty loaves (not my kids anyway). It’s no wonder that one of the earliest specialist trades in human society was that of a baker. A professional who could make economies of scale, a range of products and leave the rest of us free to get on with other stuff. Without bakers, it’s difficult to see how we would ever have got out of the stone age.

“Hello axe-maker. I’d like to upgrade my old flint hatchet to one of those new bronze ones.”

“Sorry guv I don’t have time for this bronze-smithing lark. I’m too busy punching down my dough.”

One might reasonably assume that we wouldn’t have science, medicine, art and technology (including bread machines) if people had been piddling around all day with their sourdough starters.

Even if oil runs out and we’re left in a Mad Max-like future, spending our Lewes Pounds on home grown vegetables, it’s hard to see bread-making catching on en masse. Still, though it may not last more than a few minutes as the latest eco trend, it is good to see someone blowing the trumpet for a homemade loaf. In that spirit then let me finish with a recipe.

Diggers

“Come and get evolved” beckoned the sign. Amazing when you think about it: knowing how messed up the sign reader would be and offering a superior life. It’s a combination I’d only seen in ads on the sides of religious buildings. A second sign gave a thumbs-down to cars and a big yes to bikes. The camper vans parked on Rotten Row looked like they shared a few million miles between them. Still, it was reassuring to know they wouldn’t be trashing the planet further by hot-rodding up the 20 yards of driveway from the gate.

The occupation of the old St Anne’s School site in May and June this year already feels like a hallucination. Walking by now you only know it happened because of the new fences and trespass warnings. I’m left wondering though what it was all about. What did the St Anne’s Diggers, self-dubbed “STAND”, actually achieve before they were removed? What, in short, did STAND stand for?

They did of course highlight the neglect of the St Anne’s site and pose the question of what to do with it. (What do you do with land in Lewes if flogging it off for housing isn’t an option?) Local blogger Dave Bradford provided a good summary of the history here. It’s led to a public consultation and open day. Raising awareness of environmental issues was also a given, but with an interesting twist. When I trotted up there for some digging myself (of information rather than soil) I encountered more scepticism about our local environmental movement than I was expecting. The flagship initiatives -Lewes Pound, solar panels, organic veg boxes and the like- seemed generally considered the blingy trappings of the rich who can “buy green lifestyles”. Which of course they are. You don’t hear much about poor people in environmental debates, unless it’s contempt for their love of cheap flights or of shopping at Tesco, so this was quite refreshing.

The broader agenda of the Diggers themselves on the other hand seemed less coherent. Beyond testaments to how well behaved the protestors were (and indeed everyone was incredibly polite), the main point seemed to be to demonstrate sustainable, self-sufficient living by gardening. Just exactly how this was going to work was unfortunately never made clear and, judging by the number of commodities in evidence not grown on site (tins, tents, stoves etc), that old devil money had already crept into the Garden of Eden. The point has been made in these pages before that the trouble with everyone returning to the land to save us from environmental catastrophe is that it’s an idea belonging on the compost heap of heroic failures.

In a link to history, the Diggers of St Anne’s identified themselves with the Diggers of the 17^th century England. These were an interesting bunch who envisaged us all living in a network of egalitarian communities, tilling the soil in harmony. While they were basically crushed by bigger landowners, there also wasn’t much of a popular wave behind those Diggers either. Our society elected instead to have private property, consolidated estates, spices, tea, coffee, industry, iPads and a global economy. You may question whether that was the right choice but we managed several hundred years of prosperity on the back of it. For most of us that was considerably more appealing than the alternative of spending our short lives in grinding poverty. One of the troubles with taking your cue from history is that ideas which flopped back then don’t necessarily get any better with time.

So now we’re left thinking what to do with the St. Anne’s site. What the Diggers have at least shown is that it is easy to point out what our council have done wrong. Balancing public obligations, safety concerns, what’s useful and (crucially) how to pay for it is considerably more difficult. However, the public consultation is giving everyone a chance to get involved. There are some good ideas there. Some nonsense too but well worth a look.

As Josiah Bartlett, the fantasy U.S. President for all who are liberal at heart, said “Decisions are made by those who show up”. Don’t think we need more allotments? A green burial site? A wild space? Perhaps you have a better idea? And perhaps some thoughts on how to pay for it! Now it’s over to us.

The old St Anne’s School site will be open to the public for consultation on Saturday 13^th August, 10AM- 4PM.

Growing Your Own Vegetables

“If I could show you the cabbage that I planted with my own hands”

Thus spoke the Roman Emperor Diocletian, more famous for chucking Christians to the lions, but also someone who gave up ruling the world for the pleasures of his allotment. There are days when I fantasise about following his example, especially as it involved a palace in Croatia and a load of slaves. As well as the other pleasures of growing your own, it seems that it can end the careers of tyrants. What could possibly be the trouble with it?

It turns out you don’t have to look far. Only in fact to Lewes’ own Seedy Saturday. This is an event where you can think about interesting things to plant, the more sedentary joys of others planting things for you, and listen to Marguerite Patten reminiscing about digging for victory. Then you turn into the bookstall and find yourself in a survivalist fantasy land. Wall-to-wall self-sufficiency manuals full of advice on preparing for the apocalypse by getting in your brassicas.

The idea of us producing our own food to protect ourselves is an important part of many responses to current environmental concerns. For example the magazine “The Land” envisages an agrarian idyll where, following the collapse of capitalism, we return en-masse to growing food. An increased emphasis on food self-sufficiency is also a staple of our local Transition Town movement (they like the word “resilience”). The recent Climate Camp even invited me to “Grow my own Future”. Though I’m as fond of a metaphor as I am of a ripe Ailsa Craig and realise I won’t be picking juicy futures directly from my cold-frame, the implication is once again that growing your own is the way forward.

While this reasoning is seductive quite a lot is missing. For one thing food self-sufficiency leaves populations grubbing out a precarious existence vulnerable to climatic variations or crop failures. The opposite of resilience really. We protect against this by buying food from a number of sources and countries. We can do this because for 7,000 years or so (and especially since the industrial revolution) human society has been moving away from the mass of the population being involved in food production.  This fosters the development of income-earning and more diverse skills. We have modern medicine and science and art and philosophy and a reliable food supply because primarily we’re not all stuck on the land.

If you think the fossil fuels of capitalism are going to run out soon (though a more likely danger for our environment seems to be that they won’t) a kind of post-apocalyptic subsistence life might be one way to go.  At times it’s hard to avoid the impression that vegetable gardening has become the latest meaningless gesture for the environmentally pious. While home grown food can be great the benefits of not relying on it are even greater. So, while I’m going mulch spreading soon, I have to do a quick shop at the greengrocer first and strike a blow for a better world.

John McGowan, 5^th May 2011

100 monkeys: solar so good

Last weeks sceptical assessment of the prospects for solar power led to a few responses and some further discussion. Probably only for the hardcore though...

100 monkeys: solar so good: "It was odd last week to have tow Viva Lewes columns with opposing views about solar pv, with me singing its praises and The Trouble With fe..."

Solar Power

Solar power is flavour of the month around town. With the proposed community owned power station and the Rooks thinking about getting panels, it sounds as if Lewes is leading the way into a low emissions future. In the face of environmental catastrophe, free energy from the sky certainly sounds like a tempting option. Lately I’ve been wondering though if the optimism around solar power is justified. What, one is tempted to ask, could be the trouble with energy from the sun?

Looking more closely at solar, the primary trouble is something familiar to Brits: the weather. Blighty is not a sunny climate and we use the brunt of our electricity in winter when the supply of sunshine is at its least abundant. There is also cost of installing panels. Photovoltaic panels (that’s the kind which generate electricity) for a typical house are likely be somewhere between 7 and 15 grand.  When you stick these factors together the figures don’t look encouraging, either from an individual point of view or from the wider social angle.

For individuals even the most promising scenarios suggest that if you install such panels, you might get electricity worth about 25% of the installation costs over the life of your system. While money isn’t everything, this picture would leave solar unlikely to catch on except among people who have spare cash and enjoy the warmth generated by their own piety rather than the small amount of energy they’ll get in the British winter. The last government recognised this and set up an incentive called the feed-in-tariff to encourage take-up. This involves buying any unused electricity householders generate from solar panels they’ve hooked into the National Grid (presumably mostly in the summer). The rates of payment for spare lecky are generous to put it mildly: often several times the cost of electricity generated by other sources. The question is open as to how many people this will encourage but it’s undoubtedly a nice investment opportunity for those who can afford it. The social perspective comes in when you realise that the people paying this enormous subsidy are the rest of us. Clearly this isn’t sustainable and a rather hot debate among environmental commentators right now is about whether this money would be better spent on the development of other alternatives to fossil fuels. The feed-in-tariff represents a big bet (with our money) that the price of the technology will ultimately come down and that of other energy sources will rise, to the point where solar is cost-effective.

Solar isn’t a significant energy source at the moment and there are plenty (including many earlier advocates) who doubt it ever will be, for the UK at least. You might want to consider this if you were thinking of taking a shareholding in the local power station. Is it a good bet? Or is it as big a leap of faith over sense as the Lewes Pound? For now it is worth remembering that, for something free, solar sure is expensive.

Pound for Pound

From http://www.vivalewes.com/ Nov 2008

The launch of the Lewes Pound has been the biggest thing to hit town since the boycott of the Lewes Arms all those months ago. The Pound's website promotes it as way to keep money in the local economy, cut carbon emissions and strengthen relationships with local traders. Though coverage has been everywhere (local and national) there has so far been very little discussion of what the Pound can realistically achieve. Lately I've been wondering: when all the razzmatazz, and eBay auctions are over what's the Pound really worth?

The argument that the Pound keeps money local goes something like this. Did you realise that the Lewes economy is like a bucket full of holes? Money that comes into Lewes is leaking into the globalised world beyond. The Lewes Pound will address this by ensuring that a portion of the money in circulation can only be spent in local businesses. This should maintain (and perhaps increase) spending in local shops. Just how many Pounds circulate in the local economy depends on how many people pick them up in the first place and on how many of those keep using them after the initial buzz. The arrangement is envisaged as permanent though of course it’s possible that, after dealing with two kinds of money for a while, a portion of people may find this a hassle and revert to regular cash. Though the plan is optimistic, the evidence for such complementary currencies may be less encouraging. It suggests that they have their best chance of catching on when physical money is scarce and large numbers of people really need a substitute. They literally stop money going out of town. In a country with plenty of coins, notes and plastic there just isn't the same necessity for an alternative, and complementary currency is far more likely to remain a novelty. After all people already have a way of supporting local business.

This support is given via regular money but an aim for the Pound (assuming enough people use it) is to increase the amount spent. However, here it runs into another problem. What about all those times when buying from the shop down the road is undermined by price, product range and all sorts of other factors which influence us weak-willed consumers. If you don't have a lot of money to throw around, the hole in the bucket that leads to Asda might look quite attractive. Sadly, in Lewes many small traders selling core commodities, like food and electrical goods, haven’t been able to compete in recent years. Against such forces what chance for the Lewes Pound? The example of the Totnes Pound (on which the Lewes Pound is based) is instructive. It maintains a steady circulation which implies that it at least has a number of committed advocates who keep putting it out there. However, is far from clear that it has increased spending in the local economy. In fact its circulation might just as easily mean that the market for local goods and services is fairly stable and unlikely to be dramatically altered by these kinds of initiatives.

Of all the possible benefits of the Lewes Pound, cutting carbon emissions has been put front and centre. The assumption is that keeping trade local will help the environment. Much as I love the High Street, this is not always a straightforward case to make. Sure, people walk to local shops but they also drive to them. Supermarkets often (though not always) mean you have to drive, but then larger loads can mean fewer trips. Relative to the volume of stuff they sell, large stores may have fewer deliveries than small ones as their products can often be delivered in larger amounts. Also there is no obligation on local traders to stock local goods and the products people demand mean even corner shops have a global inventory. Strange though it may sound, even if shops do have more local goods, there is no guarantee that commodities from nearby have a lower carbon footprint than stuff flown in from abroad. Local vegetables may come from heated polytunnels or British apples could have been refrigerated for months. Anyway, if we're really serious about cutting emissions internet shopping can be a more efficient way, as many deliveries can be made on one journey. It’s often complicated to calculate the carbon cost of various shopping options and proposing a vague notion of “localness” as the solution to emissions is seriously oversimplifying the issue.

All of which seems to leave us making friends with local traders. Despite some instances of traders being hassled to accept Lewes Pounds by some customers, this may be one area where the people behind the Pound are onto something. Community development is something complementary currencies can at least potentially achieve if they get beyond being simply a curiosity for the middle-class. If nothing else Lewes Pounds will give us all something to talk about now the parking has been done to death. Actually, and maybe this is the real point of the exercise, they do more than that and have been a publicity coup worthy of a town that's been grabbing headlines since Simon de Montfort. Local trading is well worth shouting about and can be wonderful in myriad ways: not least convenience, services the big boys can't match, and gluing the whole community together.

The other side of the Lewes Pound, though, is a danger that complex problems are being addressed with a romantic fantasy of self-sufficiency rather than appropriate solutions. The survival of local business in the face of globalised competition is an issue that requires action well beyond temporary hype. We need to consider many solutions from high quality start-up advice for businesses to supportive local authorities. Transition Town deserve credit for having raised a flag: it’s down to all of us to work out how to keep it flying.

Pretend Money

I paid for something with Lewes Pounds the other day. Not particularly noteworthy you’d think but actually it was the first time in the two years of its existence that I’d ever been asked for, or offered, the local lucre. To be honest I’d begun to wonder if it was still on the go (though now I come to think of it there is  still a rather forlorn looking stall at the Farmer’s market). However, Comedy at the Con (I highly recommend it) were offering 3 quid off the headline price so it seemed worth a trip to the Town Hall to buy some... Well is there a slang for Lewes Pounds? Given the absence of even a nickname as a marker of public consciousness I can’t help but wonder: what is the trouble with pretend money?

The arguments for the Pound are economic and environmental. The economic argument is that the money can only be spent locally thereby supporting local businesses who participate in the scheme. There are all sorts of questions posed by this and the evidence for such complementary currencies is not encouraging. It suggests that they have their best chance of catching on when physical money is scarce and large numbers of people really need a substitute. The Con Club, and anyone who offers a similar promotion, clearly can’t go on taking a hit forever so at some point meaningful use of local money comes down to a matter of whether enough people can be arsed with the extra hassle or not. The continuing novelty status of the LP suggests that most people can’t.  Local traders are really up against it when competing with big boys as the costs of core commodities costs can be kept lower due to economies of scale. There isn’t really any evidence that local currencies can do anything to challenge this trend.

It’s on the environmental arguments though that local currencies really become confused. The assumption is that keeping trade local will help the environment through reduced carbon emissions.  Alas this is not a straightforward case to make.  Sure, people walk to local shops but they also drive to them. Supermarkets often mean you have to drive, but then larger loads can mean fewer trips.  And since when do local traders have to stock local goods? Even corner shops have a global inventory.

It’s also worth considering if “locavorism” is quite as virtuous as all that. As well as being increasingly ripe for parody, a closer look suggests it offers no guarantees of reduced carbon footprints.  A vague notion of “localness” as a tool to combat environmental difficulties seems simplistic at best.

Clearly modern environmental problems are enormous and most of us may struggle to come up with a meaningful response. Initiatives like  the Lewes Pound  may have more piety value than practical effect. Of course, for as long as there are people willing put it out there the LP might possibly serve as another reminder of the crisis we’re in. Perhaps the trouble is though that it doesn’t do anything else.

John McGowan, 3rd Feb, 2011